Kanafani in Kuwait: a Clinical Cartography
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Kanafani in Kuwait: A Clinical Cartography Mai Al-Nakib Kuwait University Abstract The trope of Kuwait runs through numerous stories by Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani, including his well-known novella, Men in the Sun. Using Deleuze’s clinical methodology, this paper maps Kanafani’s Kuwait stories symptomatically to determine what the legacy of the Kanafani effect might be for contemporary Kuwait. It considers what his textual conjunction of affects and percepts did at the time and whether they can do anything now. Kanafani’s position as a seminal figure within Palestinian national and resistance literature is well- recognised; however, his specific location in Kuwait at a key period of its development is generally overlooked. His clinical diagnosis of the relationship between Kuwait and Palestinians in the 1940s and 1950s can provoke a reconsideration of that early period, especially relevant in light of post-1991 events. In addition to his writing, his actual presence in Kuwait in the second half of the 1950s expresses an early promise of Kuwait as an open and cosmopolitan place soon betrayed and today mostly forgotten. Keywords: Ghassan Kanafani in Kuwait, Deleuze’s literary clinic, symptomatology, health, cartography, fabulation, Kanafani effect In Ghassan Kanfani’s most well-known novella, Rijal fi al-shams (Men in the Sun), Abu Qais, one of three men who die in a water tank in the process of being smuggled across the desert from Basra to Kuwait, describes Kuwait as a destination full of ‘all the things he had been deprived of’ (Kanafani 1983: 13/46).1 He believes that ‘what only lived in his mind as a dream and a fantasy existed there’ (Kanafani 1983: Deleuze Studies 9.1 (2015): 88–111 DOI: 10.3366/dls.2015.0175 ©EdinburghUniversityPress www.euppublishing.com/journal/dls Kanafani in Kuwait: A Clinical Cartography 89 13/46). It is, unlike Palestine, a place with no trees but ‘with sacks of money’ to compensate (Kanafani 1983: 13/46). The trope of Kuwait looms large in a number of Kanafani’s stories. It is more than a locale or destination; it becomes a place-holder for what has been lost. In Kanafani’s nuanced depictions, however, Kuwait never quite lives up to expectation. As it turns out, and as Kanafani’s texts demonstrate early on, Kuwait can provide no viable solution to Palestinian woes.2 The 1948 Nakba coincided with the period of Kuwait’s oil production and its efforts to establish the institutions necessary for its imminent independence as a nation-state. Kuwait opened its doors to Palestinian immigrants who were experienced, highly educated and fully equipped to help Kuwait through its passage into modernity, which they did. On the surface, this symbiotic relationship flourished for decades, and the years of Kanafani’s stay correspond with the beginning of this unique aggregate. The Palestinian community in Kuwait developed into a vibrant, self-sustaining entity. It was responsible for the financial support of Palestinian refugee communities all over the Arab world. It was culturally and socially dynamic, with organisations championing the preservation of Palestinian handicrafts, the development of Palestinian children’s education, and the advocacy of Palestinian women’s rights, among many other things. Perhaps most significant was the community’s political contributions; Fatah was founded in Kuwait by Yasser Arafat, who came in 1957 as a teacher, like Kanafani and so many other prominent Palestinian intellectuals and future activists and leaders. However, as the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion suggests, something other than mutual benefit must also have been taking place. I suggest it is this other relation between Palestinians and Kuwait that Kanafani’s texts diagnose. Deleuze argues that writers, like doctors, are ‘astonishing diagnosticians or symptomatologists’ (Deleuze 1990: 237). He explains: Clinicians who are able to renew a symptomatological table produce a work of art; conversely, artists are clinicians, not with respect to their own case, or even with respect to a case in general; rather they are clinicians of civilization. (Deleuze 1990: 237; Smith 1997; Lambert 2000) One role of the literary critic can be to map symptoms organised by artists and writers in order to assess what might be done with their diagnoses; to consider, for example, whether such diagnoses might be put to work toward otherwise ignored ethical considerations (Smith 90 Mai Al-Nakib 1997: lii).3 Bruce Baugh calls this ‘a revolutionary pragmatics of reading’ (Baugh 2000: 34). Baugh describes the two movements involved in such a reading process: first, a consideration of ‘whether a work is in fact capable of producing certain effects, and [. ] determining the nature of those effects’; and, second, considering ‘whether a given effect furthers the objectives of an individual or group (whether the effect is helpful, harmful or indifferent)’ (Baugh 2000: 34). While such clinical cartographies may produce unexpected effects, there is no guarantee such effects will be sensed (actualised) within a given milieu; they may remain untimely (Deleuze 1983: 107). Beyond symptomatology, Aidan Tynan argues in his recent study, Deleuze’s Literary Clinic, that it is imperative to consider how Deleuze’s ‘critique et clinique’ project ‘relates to the later schizoanalytical work developed with Guattari’ (Tynan 2012: 4). As a schizoanalytical (and not exclusively a diagnostic or symptomatological) process, Tynan notes that Deleuze’s literary clinic is both pragmatic and experimental; it ‘has to do with the problem of political engagement as well as the status of the creative process in relation to the life process’ (Tynan 2012: 5–6). This marks ‘the literary clinic’s transition from diagnostics to therapeutics’ (Tynan 2012: 170). A schizoanalytical pragmatics of reading, thus, goes beyond assessment or evaluation (but not as far as judgement); it puts the literary machine in question to work towards change (Deleuze 1995: 7–8, 21–2; Buchanan 2000: 97). Using Deleuze’s clinical methodology, this essay reads Kanafani’s Kuwait stories both symptomatically and pragmatically in order to determine what the legacy of the Kanafani effect might be for contemporary Kuwait (whether it can be put to work).4 What exactly were Kanafani’s fabulations of Kuwait? What, if anything, did this textual conjunction of affects and percepts do at the time, and can it do anything now? If, as Deleuze states, ‘it is the task of the fabulating function to invent a people’, is it only the Palestinians as a missing people that Kanafani’s texts produce or is there some connection to Kuwait itself (to Kuwaitis as a missing people) (Deleuze 1997: 4)? Kanafani’s position as a seminal figure within Palestinian national and resistance literature is well-recognised; however, his specific location in Kuwait at akeyperiodofitsdevelopmentisgenerallyoverlooked.5 Ibelievehis clinical diagnosis of the relationship between Kuwait and Palestinians in the 1940s and 1950s can provoke a critical reconsideration of that early history, especially relevant in light of the displacement of the Palestinian community in Kuwait after 1991. In addition to his writing, I suggest his Kanafani in Kuwait: A Clinical Cartography 91 actual presence in Kuwait in the second half of the 1950s, on the cusp of Kuwait’s independence from Britain, expresses an early promise of Kuwait as an open and cosmopolitan place, a promise which, since the turn of the millennium, has been mostly forgotten. I. Literary Clinician In 1948, with Acre, the town of Kanafani’s birth, occupied by Zionists, he and his family fled to southern Lebanon, eventually ending up in Damascus. Kanafani was twelve years old at the time. In 1952, at the age of sixteen, Kanafani taught Palestinian refugee children at a United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) school, while simultaneously studying Arabic Literature at Damascus University. It was during this pivotal early period that Kanafani began to write stories and to become active in politics – the twin preoccupations of his life. In 1955, not yet twenty, Kanafani moved to Kuwait to join his brother and sister. Like so many Palestinians, including the narrator of his epistolary story, ‘Waraqa min Gaza’ (‘Letter from Gaza’), Kanafani was under contract with the Kuwait Ministry of Education. In addition to teaching art at al-Ghazali public school, Kanafani started to publish short stories in earnest during his six-year stay. Among others, some of these stories include: ‘Waraqa min Gaza’ (‘Letter from Gaza’); ‘Lulu fi al-Tariq’ (‘Pearls in the Street’); ‘Ard al-Burtuqal al-Hazin’ (‘The Land of Sad Oranges’); ‘al-Qamis al-Mesruq’ (‘The Stolen Shirt’); ‘Ka‘k ‘ala al- Rasif’ (‘The Cake Vendor’); ‘Fi Janazeti’ (‘In My Funeral’); and ‘Mawt Sarir 12’ (‘Death of Bed 12’). His story ‘The Stolen Shirt’ won the Kuwait Literary Prize in 1958. Kanafani was also an active journalist during his time in Kuwait. He regularly published articles in Kuwaiti magazines and in Kuwaiti newspapers, such as al-Taleea.Kanafaniassociatedwith members of Kuwait’s liberal intelligentsia and Arab nationalist activists, including Ahmed al-Khatib (founding member of the Arab Nationalist Movement [ANM] with George Habash and other key figures in 1951). In 1960, Kanafani left Kuwait to Beirut to join the editorial staff of George Habash’s new political magazine, al-Hurriyya. Significantly, as Karen E. Riley mentions in her biographical preface to Kanafani’s collection of stories, Palestine’s Children,Kuwaitwasalso where the writer was first diagnosed with severe diabetes. If at twelve Kanafani was forced to confront the fragility of a homeland, in his early twenties he was faced with the transience of life itself. In a letter sent from Kuwait to a friend, he wrote: 92 Mai Al-Nakib When I was twelve, just as I began to perceive the meaning of life and nature around me, I was hurled down and exiled from my own country.